Ironclad turret ship (2m).
L/B/D:
200 lbp × 35.5 × 16 (37.8m × 10.2m × 3.4m). Tons:
1,870 disp. Hull:
iron. Comp.:
193. Arm.:
2 × 300pdr, 1 × 10, 2 × 40pdr, 1 × 12pdr. Armor:
4.5 belt. Mach.:
Maudslay return connecting rod engine, 300 hp, 1 screw; 12 kts. Des.:
Cowper Coles. Built:
Laird Bros., Ltd., Birkenhead, Eng.; 1865.
Ordered by the Peruvian Navy during the war with Spain, Huascar was named for the son of the Incan emperor Huayna Capac. The third of the seagoing turret ships conceived by Captain Cowper Coles, Huascar's primary armament was housed in a 22-foot-diameter turret mounted abaft the foremast. She had a 138-degree arc of fire on either beam. Huascar joined the Peruvian-Chilean squadron under Chile's Rear Admiral Manuel Blanco Encalada and proceeded to Callao to take part in Peru's final revolution against Spain, but arrived after hostilities with Spain were over.
In 1877, Huascar was seized by supporters of Nicolas de Piérola, and under command of Manuel M. Carrasco, she raided as far as Pisagua, Bolivia, before being engaged by HMS Shah and Amethyst off Ilo, Peru, on May 29. Piérola surrendered the ship to Peruvian authorities the following day. In April 1879, Peru entered the War of the Pacific as Bolivia's ally against Chile. Under Commander Miguel Grau, on May 21 Huascar and the ironclad frigate Independencia attempted to raise the Chilean blockade of Iquique by the gunboat Covadonga and the twenty-year-old screw corvette Esmeralda, which Huascar sank by ramming. On October 8, Huascar encountered the Chilean ships Cochrane and Blanco Encalada off Agamos Point near Antofagasta. In the hour-and-a-half battle, which pitted Coles's turret ironclad against Edward J. Reed's broadside battery ships, Huascar was hit with an estimated 70 rounds that knocked out her steering, penetrated her turret, and killed 64 of her 193 crew, including Grau. Captured and commissioned in the Chilean Navy, Huascar was put on blockade duty for the remainder of the war. In 1901 Huascar was stricken from the active list, but she served as a submarine tender from 1917 to 1930. She was opened to the public as a museum ship at Talcahuano in 1952. (Several years after her engagement with Huascar, Blanco Encalada was the first ship sunk by a self-propelled torpedo, during the Chilean revolution.)
Seeger, "The Ten-Cent War." Wood, "Ironclad Turret Ship Huascar."
